What Does Twitter’s Country-by-Country Takedown System Mean for Freedom of Expression?

From EFF:

Yesterday, Twitter announced in a blog post that it was launching a system that would allow the company to take down content on a country-by-country basis, as opposed to taking it down across the Twitter system. The Internet immediately exploded with allegations of censorship, conspiracy theories about Twitter’s Saudi investors and automated content filtering, and calls for a January 28 protest. One thing is clear: there is widespread confusion over Twitter’s new policy and what its implications are for freedom of expression all over the world.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Twitter already takes down some tweets and has done so for years. All of the other commercial platforms that we’re aware of remove content, at a minimum, in response to valid court orders. Twitter removes some tweets because they are deemed to be abuse or spam, while others are removed in compliance with court orders or DMCA notifications. Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally. So for example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk–which is illegal under Turkish law–the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody. Now Twitter has the capability to take down the tweet for people with IP addresses that indicate that they are in Turkey and leave it up everywhere else. Right now, we can expect Twitter to comply with court orders from countries where they have offices and employees, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany.

Twitter’s increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions. By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another. Twitter could have reduced its need to be the instrument of government censorship by keeping its assets and personnel within the borders of the United States, where legal protections exist like CDA 230 and the DMCA safe harbors (which do require takedowns but also give a path, albeit a lousy one, for republication).    More

And, from Wired:

Twitter Censorship Move Sparks Backlash: Is It Justified?

Internet scorn for Twitter’s announcement Thursday that it would censor tweets was swift and unforgiving.

But even free-speech and other experts were divided Friday on the service’s move that it might censor tweets if required by law in ”countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression.”

Like Yahoo and Google before it — and for the same reason, becoming a global powerhouse — Twitter has confronted an inconvenient truth: Freedom of expression is sacrosanct and protected by the Constitution in the United States, but in other parts of the world, not so much.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which typically has no patience with any sort of censorship, saw Twitter’s announcement as little more than stating the obvious. ”I’m a little puzzled by the kind of freak out that kind of appears to be happening. Companies have to abide by the law where they are,” said Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the digital rights group.

The ACLU wasn’t as forgiving. ”The countries that engage in censorship are precisely the ones in which open and neutral social media platforms are most critical,” said Aden Fine, an ACLU staff attorney. “We hope Twitter will think carefully before acceding to any specific requests by those governments to censor content simply because they want to interfere with their citizens’ access to information and ideas.”           More

2011 in Review: The Fight for Free Speech and Privacy on the Internet

2011 in Review: The Year Secrecy Jumped the Shark

 

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.


The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:

• Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.

• Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.

• Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.

• President Obama refuses to say the words “drone” or “C.I.A” despite the C.I.A. drone program being on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers every day.

• CIA refuses to release even a single passage from its center studying global warming, claiming it would damage national security. As Secrecy News’ Steven Aftergood said, “That’s a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.”

• The CIA demands former FBI agent Ali Soufan censor his book criticizing the CIA’s post 9/11 interrogation tactics of terrorism suspects. Much of the material, according to the New York Times, “has previously been disclosed in open Congressional hearings, the report of the national commission on 9/11 and even the 2007 memoir of George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director.”

• Department of Homeland Security has become so bloated with secrecy that even the “office’s budget, including how many employees and contractors it has, is classified,” according to the Center for Investigative reporting. Yet their intelligence reports “produce almost nothing you can’t find on Google,” said a former undersecretary.

• Headline from the Wall Street Journal in September: “Anonymous US officials push open government.”

• NSA declassified a 200 year old report which they said demonstrated its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s transparency agenda. Unfortunately, the document “had not met the government’s own standards for classification in the first place,” according to J. William Leonard, former classification czar.           More

Stand Up and Fight: A Week of Action Against Internet Censorship

EFF - When the government claims the right to shut down websites by breaking the Domain Name System and forcing search engines to dump user requests to reach a site, there’s only one word for it: censorship. And when big media groups like the RIAA can essentially cut off the financial services to a website based on accusation alone, it’s censorship at the hands of corporations.

We’re not talking about China or Iran. We’re talking about blacklist legislation being debated by the U.S. House of Representatives this week.

EFF and a coalition of organizations, tech companies, innovators, and users are joining forces to fight back against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that would give the government and big content unprecedented authority to censor the web in the name of so-called copyright enforcement. This week, we need to pull out all the stops because the House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold a critical hearing on Thursday.

SOPA’s supporters are desperate to rush this bill through quickly by convincing Congress there’s no real opposition to it. We know better, but we need to make our voices heard. That’s why we’re calling on you to join us in a dedicated week of action against the SOPA blacklist bill.                 More

Candice Lanier - The Erosion of Free Speech on the Internet

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a vaguely worded anti-stalking law poses a serious threat to freedom of speech online.  The EFF specifically cites a case involving the popular microblogging platform, Twitter:

EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief today urging a federal court to block the government’s use of the federal anti-stalking law to prosecute a man for posting criticism of a public figure to Twitter.

At issue is a federal law originally enacted to criminalize traveling across state lines for the purpose of stalking. In 2005, the law was modified to make the “intentional infliction of emotional distress” by the use of “any interactive computer service” a crime. In this case, the government has presented the novel and dangerous theory that the use of a public communication service like Twitter to criticize a well-known individual can result in criminal liability based on the personal sensibilities of the person being criticized.

“Wielding the threat of criminal sanctions to punish the pointed, online criticism of public figures is not only bad policy, it is unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “While true threats can and should be opposed, public speech about prominent people must be vigorously protected.”

For the full amicus brief in US v. Cassidy:

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/us_v_cassidy/eff_amicus_cassidy.pdf

For more on this case:

https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-cassidy

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2011/07/29

Anti-stalking legislation in California is similarly vague and can restrict any “annoying, embarrassing communications” leveled against an individual.   What’s more, across the country other legislation, such as this, is being drafted – at an alarmingly rapid rate.  Those laws which can be viewed broadly can severely restrict the rights of those who seek to express themselves online.

More on the California anti-stalking legislation

Related Cases

The First Amendment Center’s Website

New cyberstalking law challenged over ‘annoy’ language
By David L. Hudson Jr. Arizona anonymous e-mail company contends little-noticed provision criminalizes much protected speech. 02.24.06

Mo. lawmakers vote to bar Internet harassment
Governor praises new cyberstalking law, a response to suicide of state teen who was teased online. 05.19.08

Mo. woman pleads not guilty to charges related to MySpace suicide
Experts say case could break new legal ground; statute used to indict Lori Drew usually applies to Internet hackers who illegally access accounts to get information. 06.17.08

Mo. governor signs anti-cyberbullying bill into law
Teen’s suicide prompts state to outlaw Internet harassment; girl’s mother says even more needs to be done to keep kids safe online. 07.01.08

E-mails sent to Va. Tech students were true threats
By David L. Hudson Jr. 4th Circuit panel says any ordinary, reasonable person would have understood Johnmarlo B. Napa’s messages as threats. 03.23.10

Anti-stalking legislation is not, by any means, the only threat to Internet free speech.   Successful social networking site, Facebook and its new competitor, Google+ both require that users use their real names.  Failure to comply can result in account deactivation.

Numerous reasons exist as to why some opt to use a pseudonym instead of a real name.  Some of those reasons are detailed at Liberty Voice:

They may be concerned about threats to their lives or livelihoods, or they may risk political or economic retribution. They may wish to prevent discrimination or they may use a name that’s easier to pronounce or spell in a given culture.

Longtime online inhabitants may have handles that have spanned over twenty years.

As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens put forth in deciding McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n 514 U.S. 334, 357 (1995),

“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.”

And, the costs to individuals who use their real names can be vast, including:

• harassment, both online and offline

• discrimination in employment, provision of services, etc.

• actual physical danger of bullying, hate crime, etc.

• arrest, imprisonment, or execution in some jurisdictions

• economic harm such as job loss, loss of professional reputation, reduction of job opportunity, etc.

• social costs of not being able to interact with friends and colleagues

• possible (temporary) loss of access to their data if their account is suspended or terminated

Another addition to the menacing forces against free speech is the new legislation in Tennessee which bans images that may cause “emotional distress.”   Indeed,  according to  The Washington Independent, “Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill into law that criminalizes ‘transmitting or displaying’ any image that under a ‘reasonable expectation’ might ‘frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress’ to anyone who sees it. This is not limited only to images posted on the internet, but also includes TV and any other “electronic communications service” currently in existence.

In a nutshell, the law allows anyone to go after anyone – journalists, bloggers, users of social media – who will potentially face jail for up to a year or a fine of up to $2,500,  just for sharing a picture or other image.

Apparently, some people really can’t handle the truth…

Legal scholar, Eugene Volokh regards the law as “clearly unconstitutional.”  He states:

So the law now applies not just to one-to-one communication, but to people’s posting images on their own Facebook pages, on their Web sites, and in other places if (1) they are acting “without legitimate purpose,” (2) they cause emotional distress, and (3) they intend to cause emotional distress or know or reasonably should know that their action will cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities. So,

• If you’re posting a picture of someone in an embarrassing situation — not at all limited to, say, sexually themed pictures or illegally taken pictures — you’re likely a criminal unless the prosecutor, judge, or jury concludes that you had a “legitimate purpose.”

• Likewise, if you post an image intended to distress some religious, political, ethnic, racial, etc. group, you too can be sent to jail if governments decisionmaker thinks your purpose wasn’t “legitimate.” Nothing in the law requires that the picture be of the “victim,” only that it be distressing to the “victim.”

• The same is true even if you didn’t intend to distress those people, but reasonably should have known that the material — say, pictures of Mohammed, or blasphemous jokes about Jesus Christ, or harsh cartoon insults of some political group — would “cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities.”

• And of course the same would apply if a newspaper or TV station posts embarrassing pictures or blasphemous images on its site.

In other censorship news, a blogger on Twitter found out first-hand what the erosion of free speech feels like.    According to Jonathan Sangster, who goes by the name @TORARADICAL on Twitter, his account was suspended for several days without explanation.   It was finally explained to him, by Twitter, that a government agency had requested they suspend his account so that it could be investigated for suspicious activity.

More on the Jonathan Sangster incident

Update on incident

I have read content on Sangster’s blog – none of which would arouse suspicion from a clear thinking, lucid individual.   Sangster was merely exercising a constitutional right.   These incidents represent an obvious threat to one of our most precious civil liberties.